[Note: This announcement is copied from my other blog project at WORLD magazine.]
It's not quite American Idol, but we're starting today a contest that will give a few good bloggers an opportunity to gain a larger audience. If you'd like to join our team of bloggers, email to worldmagblog@aol.com two three-sentence items, related to any news event or cultural trend, that you think would be appropriate for Worldmagblog. Include in your email a description of yourself in 25 words or less. You may then be invited to become a contest semi-finalist and post four more items on a special blog. Instructions for writing the initial entries are in the extended entry.
Entries should be three sentences long because we're looking for the blog equivalent of haikus, the Japanese poems that create a certain visual image in the first two lines and then offer a surprise twist in line three (maybe we should call them O'Henry haikus). Here are three examples of haikus:
a) Poverty's child -
he starts to grind the rice,
and gazes at the moon.
b) Night, and the moon!
My neighbor, playing on his flute -
out of tune.
c) The morning paper
harbinger of good and ill
- - I step over it
Each of these shows something surprising in line three: we're suddenly taken from rice-grinding to moon-gazing, from an idyllic picture of moon and flute music to out-of-tune notes, from the expectation of eager news consumption to ignoring the morning paper.
What's the equivalent of this in blogging? Here are three recent examples of O'Henry haikus on Worldmagblog, each with two sentences reporting the news and a third bringing in a little twist:
a) Justice
"Early in 1998, 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden shot and killed four students and English teacher Shannon Wright at their Arkansas school. Because of a since-closed loophole in state law, Johnson will walk free tomorrow on his 21st birthday (Golden is scheduled for release in 2007). The murdered teacher's son, now 9, says, 'I don't think it's right he gets to go home to his momma and I only get to see my momma on videos.'"
b) London's human zoo
A new exhibit at the London Zoo—appropriately titled “Human Zoo”—displays eight people scantily-clad in fig leaves prowling the grounds while zoo keepers treat them like animals. “We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man’s place in the planet’s ecosystem,” the London Zoo announced. The zookeepers have succeeded in creating the “Genesis look” with fig leaves but must have forgotten the part about man being created in God’s image.
c) Islamic swimsuit fantasies
Fighting “the influence of the West,” traditional Muslim women in Turkey are sporting an Islamic version of the swimsuit. The getup includes a full bodysuit, bonnet, hood and a long vest, available in material that supposedly allows for a tan. The lust of man, however, may not be entirely stamped out by going to such lengths: "Wherever there are women, there is eroticism. A bit of ankle … a pair of eyes is all it takes," fashion photographer Zeynel Abidin Aggul said.
CAN YOU WRITE two O'Henry haikus? Again, to join our contest email your entries to worldmagblog@aol.com, where Marvin Olasky and I will read them. The best entries may be posted on the main page of WORLD magazine's blog.